Sending Error

[antonia]

I sent an email to my test list twice with no problem. I then went to send the same message (load from the save e-mails) to my real list and got this message:

Sending error. Check your mail settings.

Server said:
354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself
550 Administrative prohibition

My test list has 3 names. The real list has over 700. Don't know if that makes a difference. I also tried lowering the number of email to send before reconnecting down to 25.

[antonia]

I still can't get this email out. It is rather urgent since we are trying to contact our list to raise funds for Peru earthquake victims.

I've not had problems before today. All the tests succeed but I still keep getting the message to check the server settings when I try to send out this notice.

We had our outgoing email limit increased to 500 per hours. We set the list to reconnect after 400 email. So at least the first half of the list should be going out. But only a dozen or so go out or none go out even if I hit the resume button. The sent e-mail log says they all went out but since I'm on the list, they apparently didn't.

[DW]

Hi Antonia,

The error indicates you might have reached your hourly limit but, from what you describe, you shouldn't have.  Were you also unable to send further test messages after receiving the error?

Your message will appear under "Sent Messages" even before it has finished sending.  It is possible to have a message seen as "sent" before all queuing to the server has taken place.  I may improve on this in the future.

The error, if caught immediately by LMP, should theoretically stop all sending until messages can get through again.  The error should not severely affect your mailout unless there are further problems, such as blocks against your server or a severely overloaded server email queue.  

To be absolutely sure your messages are being accepted for delivery by the server enable the "Always write SMTP log" feature on the Configuration page.  This will help you troubleshoot non-delivery to your own email address.  If the server accepts your message and you don't receive it you may want to contact your host to make sure things are running ok and perhaps have them trace the last few messages to your email address to see if your server accepted the message.

Regards

[antonia]

Yes, after I get the error I can immediately send the same message to my test list. I can also hit resume and another few emails presumably go out. The page counts always says "0" were sent to the server. But if I go to another page, the info at the top of the page indicates that the number of messages left to be sent is 17 or 18 messages less than before.

I've enabled the SMTP log. How do I view it?

UPDATE
Oh, I see. You only see it when email goes out. I just sent the message to selected names on the same mailing list and saw the attachment. I don't get that when I send to the whole list, so I presume that means nothing was sent.  Here is the log from the email to the selection (3 names) if that will help.

> EHLO localhost
250-box***.host.com Hello localhost [127.0.0.1]
250-SIZE 52428800
250-PIPELINING
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250-STARTTLS
250 HELP
LM: SMTP Pipelining Detected
> NOOP
250 OK
> MAIL FROM: <bounce@mydomain.com>
> RCPT TO: <nameremoved@domainremoved.org>
250 OK
250 Accepted
> DATA
354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself
> SENT DATA
250 OK id=1IR50t-0007hJ-MG
> MAIL FROM: <bounce@mydomain.com>
> RCPT TO: <nameremoved@domainremoved.org>
250 OK
250 Accepted
> DATA
354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself
> SENT DATA
250 OK id=1IR50u-0007hJ-7O
> MAIL FROM: <bounce@mydomain.com>
> RCPT TO: <nameremoved@domainremoved.org>
250 OK
250 Accepted
> DATA
354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself
> SENT DATA
250 OK id=1IR50v-0007hJ-9y
> QUIT
221 box***.host.com closing connection

[antonia]

Update #2,

This time after hitting Resume (on the big list) I got the message:

Sending error. Check your mail settings.

Server said:
250 Accepted

but still no log. And again, the count says "0" messages were sent to server and the notice that tells me how many are still left to be sent indicates that only 17 message seem to have gone out since the last time I hit the resume button.

[DW]

Hi Antonia,

Looking at past support tickets I was able to login to your server and check the written SMTP logs.  (They can be accessed via FTP and are found in your ListMail 'attach' folder)  It appears your server was delaying on certain messages.  ListMail "skips" after a certain amount of time, and the process was causing out-of-sync SMTP communication.  I've changed the smtp_timeout variable manually in config.php with this line:

Code: [Select]

$smtp_timeout=45;
For more information about this please search the forum for smtp_timeout.

This may or may not solve the "Administrative prohibition" error, but should stop errors where you don't expect them, such as the error that said "Accepted".

Please let me know if you continue to have troubles.

Regards

[antonia]

Continuing to hit the resume button after your change, they went out 50 at a time now rather than 17. Guess I have to keep increasing the setting? I know now they were being sent--I finally received my copy. But it wasn't until  I got down to the last 14 addresses that things fully worked normally, meaning I got the message that 14 messages were sent to the server at
Average speed .25 per second. 900 per hour. And then I also finally saw the link to the log.

I read an old post back in 2004 regarding this that suggested making a change to the sendmail file so that the whole list isn't held up while checking addresses. I don't know if that's my issue or not. Or if that still applies in 2007. I'm still at a loss.

At any rate. Even if this can be fixed and I'm able to send the 500 per hour, is there a way to do this so that listmail automatically sends the rest of the list each hour so I don't have to manually resume the mailing as I had to do this time?

Thank you for your help.

[DW]

Are you sure your server is using sendmail (that fix is here)?  When I telnet to port 25 of your domain (h...s...com) I see Exim:

220-box.example.com ESMTP Exim 4.66

So your host should probably apply these Exim optimizations, if any.

The auto-resume script could be scheduled for once per hour - do you need help setting it up?

Regards

[antonia]

Yes, I'd definitely like help setting up the auto-resume script. And if you also do the Exim optimizations (I think I just assumed I had Sendmail because I've heard of it), I think it would be wiser to have you handle that as well. Great. So let me know what's next. Thanks.

[DW]

Antonia,

I'd definitely like help setting up the auto-resume script.

This has been done.  It is configured to run every hour on the hour via the "Cron jobs" section of cPanel.  

And if you also do the Exim optimizations (I think I just assumed I had Sendmail because I've heard of it), I think it would be wiser to have you handle that as well.

I am fairly certain you are on shared hosting and do not have administrator access to the server.  If this is the case you will have to ask your web host about the possibility of them applying the exim optimizations for you.  I recommend copying and pasting the instructions to them.

Regards